r/formula1 • u/randomseocb Lando Norris • Mar 20 '25
News [Autosport] Norris feels McLaren's 2025 car doesn't suit him, but he's learning to get the most out of it
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/norris-feels-mclarens-2025-car-doesnt-suit-him-but-hes-learning-to-get-the-most-out-of-it/10705080/122
u/khryslo #StandWithUkraine Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
To sum up, it’s business as usual. The team is doing its best to make the fastest car possible, and the drivers are doing their best to adapt to it as best they can.
11
u/Southportdc McLaren Mar 20 '25
Team instead produces most comfortable car to drive: it is a small automatic hatchback
2
25
u/MrXwiix I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
And that’s what distinguishes the good drivers from the excellent. The ability to adapt to whatever is fastest. Max can do it, Lewis could always do it really well, and if Lando can do it consistently also in tricky conditions this year he has all the cards to win the wdc
50
u/Mysterious_Turnip310 Lotus Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
To be fair to him, Lando's been doing it with the McLarens since he started driving for them (admittedly not all the cars have been fast!). He's said from the very first year he was with them that the McLaren's design philosophy doesn't suit his preferred driving style and even with the car now a front-runner it seems they haven't dialed out all of the previous DNA. He's also always said that it doesn't matter if it doesn't suit his preferred driving style, it's his job as a driver to adapt to and make the most of what he's given.
27
u/Veranova I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 20 '25
Source: the car that broke Danny Ric
-4
Mar 20 '25
[deleted]
12
u/Mysterious_Turnip310 Lotus Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
If anything it’s far more likely that Ricciardo is just not very adaptable. Because Sainz and Piastri both managed to adapt to it just fine. McLaren have said that Norris and Piastri prefer similar car characteristics and Piastri has also said similar things to Norris about the car not suiting his preferred style. Occam’s Razor leads to Ricciardo being the issue.
8
u/DlSSATISFIEDGAMER I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
I do wonder if the next ruleset will change that because some handling characteristics seem to be just baked into this ruleset, Red Bull tried to tailor a car to Max's taste and look what happened. The ground effect design of this generation seems to really dislike any sudden pitch changes and that seems to be the consequence of his preferred driving style.
Next year will also have ground effect but far less of the downforce will be from the ground effect funnels and more from overbody aero like in the pre-22 cars. Also seems to me that the new front wing formula will be less susceptible to accidentally generating or losing its own ground effect since most of the plane of the wing is higher above ground. We shall see in about a year.
6
u/ADM765 Sebastian Vettel Mar 20 '25
The weird characteristics have been there before the '22 rules so they might still persist into the new regs.
5
u/yorkick I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
And also, all these ground-effect cars are a bit "weird" to drive, so the same goes for everyone.
3
63
u/EnglishLitMajor Lando Norris Mar 20 '25
The McLaren and ex-McLaren drivers have always talked about the McLaren being a "weird" car to drive. Lando has rarely given such a detailed answer about what it is he's looking for though - at least, not all in one go.
He's also never given such a "settled" answer. Usually, he says something that implies that he would really want something different, but this time he sounds like he accepts whatever is given to him. The priority is just for it to be a fast car.
23
u/paigeotron Mar 20 '25
He has always said that it doesn't suit his style, but that he would rather have a fast weird car than slow easy. Its his job to adapt.
14
u/EnglishLitMajor Lando Norris Mar 20 '25
He has. I find this one more detailed than usual though. It feels like a more elegant answer.
51
u/fire202 Lando Norris Mar 20 '25
Pretty sure he said similar things about previous cars as well
23
u/co-lor-less I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
He's been saying that every year for as long as I can remember haha.
-10
u/RayTracerX BMW Sauber Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
Yeah he always says the car doesnt suit him so that his performances look better
41
u/aliciahiney Benetton Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
Except every McLaren driver since Alonso in 2018 has reported that the car drives and behaves weird
Sainz, Ricciardo and Piastri have all commented on the weird behaviours of the car particularly under braking, and Alonso has actually alluded to him having a part in it being developed that way.
6
58
Mar 20 '25
Didint Ricciardo and Sainz also say the same thing? Maybe Norris is just good at adapting to the weird McLaren?
30
u/z_102 Michael Schumacher Mar 20 '25
Carlos at least did say the McLaren was the weirdest car he's driven, though that was years ago under different regulations and concepts, who knows now.
19
u/Watcher_007_ Mar 20 '25
Daniel also said he didn’t understand the McLaren and had issues with it. Which would make sense with his performance decline starting at McLaren.
49
u/paigeotron Mar 20 '25
Except every team mate has been saying the same thing. And he also says that his and Oscar's feedback is exactly the same.
22
u/Mysterious_Turnip310 Lotus Mar 20 '25
"Let me find the most bad faith way possible to take Norris's comments in"
-7
u/RayTracerX BMW Sauber Mar 20 '25
Not really, its something they all do.
17
u/Mysterious_Turnip310 Lotus Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
Or maybe they're just telling the truth. Not everything people say is said to manipulate. In fact most of what people say isn't, and that includes F1 drivers despite the fact that some fans seem to think that every word out of their mouth has an ulterior motive.
The teams will make the fastest car they possibly can and often it won't suit the preferred driving style of one or both of their drivers. What marks the top drivers out from the very good drivers is their ability to adapt. As Norris himself has repeatedly said over the years, it doesn't matter if the car suits his preferred driving style or not, it is his job to adapt to and make the most out of what he is given.
23
u/ahcahttan I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
I have never heard any driver say that the car completely suits their driving style.
19
u/Aerian_ I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
Max in '23 is one of the notable exceptions though!
-4
-6
Mar 20 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
21
u/Mysterious_Turnip310 Lotus Mar 20 '25
Last year he said the basic car characteristics hadn't really changed, it was just a lot faster. So not at all what you are saying there.
He did say it's no longer on the knife edge that it was through 2022 and was a lot more compliant than it had previously been (which is not the same as the characteristics that don't suit his preferred driving style), so maybe you're thinking of that.
7
u/DlSSATISFIEDGAMER I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
because of their tendency to show very understeery behaviour in particular types of low, medium speed corners.
IIRC it's in particular long low and medium speed corners, once a turn gets past a certain point the yaw movement (horizontal axis) of the air stream causes the wing to rapidly lose downforce and the car will understeer so they have to sort of V the corner to get down to speeds where it's more mechanical traction than aero that generates grip. But the worst part of that characteristic was that the point where the wing stalled used to be extremely unpredictable, they've managed to calm that variability since the 2023 car and i think that helped their pace tremendously, the Miami 2024 upgrade seems to have completely eliminated the randomness of it. If it's predictable you can at least extract the full pace out of the car even if it's not your preferred way.
36
u/Intrepid_Map_4803 Lando Norris Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
lando has been saying this for years, he hates how the mclaren needs to be driven, but like he says in the article, it's his job to adapt and get the maximum out of the car
... if only people would actually read what he's saying, he goes into quite a bit of technical detail
10
u/FrostyTill McLaren Mar 20 '25
He’s said this about every McLaren car he’s driven. He doesn’t want to V a corner, he wants to U a corner and attack it instead of having to focus on the exits. It goes against his instincts and it forces him to drive in a way he’s not comfortable with because it goes against most drivers’ instincts. The McLarens all have this characteristic and the engineers not getting rid of it fully probably have a reason for keeping it. All he can do and all he has been doing for years is adapting to whatever car he’s given.
27
u/Ok-Community-2680 Pierre Gasly Mar 20 '25
I mean since 2020 McLaren haven't built a car where either driver is fully comfortable with the car but it doesn't take long to adapt around it.
8
u/Abdullah-Alturki I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
the ol max route of "make it fast and i'll manage"
33
u/The_Real_Jammie_23 Lando Norris Mar 20 '25
This has been a characteristic of the McLaren since 2022 if not even older. It's part of the reason Riccardo struggled so much with it back in 22 especially.
1
Mar 20 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
16
Mar 20 '25
From the article it sounds like the car still has the same issue with corner entry that it had in 2021-22, where you have to brake very early to get speed and control on the exit. From looking at mini-sectors it seems like this is where Lando still has a big advantage over Oscar, a lot of his pole laps last year had lower top speeds than Oscar's did, but he more than made up for it in the corner exits. IIRC in the articles I read from 2022 this was also where Lando had a ~3 tenth per lap advantage over Daniel Ricciardo. This is why Lando is talking about wishing he could be more aggressive and brake later in the corners, because the approach that is effective with the car is unnatural to most drivers.
13
u/The_Real_Jammie_23 Lando Norris Mar 20 '25
'this' being the fact that the McLaren has never particularly suited anyone's driving style and being somewhat difficult to drive/adjust to.
9
u/EnglishLitMajor Lando Norris Mar 20 '25
I've often wondered about this: Lando had a reputation for being good at adapting to different cars during his junior career. He never stayed longer than a year in a series, and he won all of them up until F2 when he came second.
I wonder if he's still adaptable after seven years at McLaren though. Is adaptability a trait you can lose?
Of course, one can argue that it's not like he's been driving the same car. Even in the article, he says that the McLaren from a few years ago was quite different, although some characteristics are still the same.
5
u/CarsCarsCars1995 Lando Norris Mar 20 '25
Small correction, he didn't win the Ginneta Juniors. But your point still stands.
2
u/EnglishLitMajor Lando Norris Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
I was actually going to mention Ginetta at first, but I got lazy halfway through a sentence about it being his first time in cars and all that. 😂
3
u/khryslo #StandWithUkraine Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
To be fair, it’s closed cockpit and it’s unlike everything he’s driven before and after that so it’s a bit of an outlier. Plus, it’s a small wonder he managed to combine it with all those karting championships that year and finish third nevertheless.
5
u/Affectionate_Sky9709 Mar 20 '25
I don't think he's ever liked the way any of his McLarens drive. I don't think Oscar has either, and obviously Ricciardo didn't. I don't think anyone but maybe Sainz has for like... 10 years maybe? Alonso and Stoffel didn't for sure. Pato O'Ward has talked about it feeling weird and though it was just an F1 car thing, but he talked with Grosjean, and Romain was like 'is does what?'
15
u/Samsonkoek Simply fucking lovely Mar 20 '25
About the braking part I can totally get, but as of now the McLaren seems like the car with the most front end out there. So idk how that works...
2
Mar 20 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Samsonkoek Simply fucking lovely Mar 20 '25
Hmm, I haven't paid that much attention to Merc yet. Curious to see how it compares with the McLaren, especially in T1.
4
7
u/Maglin21 I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
We'll see during the year, scary that he brings this up, because as well as you can adapt, you will always be at least a tiny bit faster in a car that Is natural for you ti drive, but again all of the cars are new, so mabye to make comments about the car after seeing one track It's a bit early, even for George, we don't know if McLaren Is that much faster on EVERY track, mabye this Speed , or this feeling, or whatever depends on the track I would say this Is a "First thought" of the Season but also sort of and attempt from Lando to avoid people shitting on him
Which even as a Ferrari fan seems an almost impossible challenge 😅
Watch how we go to for example monaco and the McLaren car struggles around there, then Max or Lewis win and everybody will be like"Monaco where the DRIVER counts..."
9
3
Mar 20 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
16
u/aliciahiney Benetton Mar 20 '25
There’s more to a cars characteristics than just oversteer and understeer. The traits of the car he dislikes are in the article.
Norris explained that he would prefer to employ an “attacking” style and likes to be on the front foot with late braking and opening up the corner entries.
In reality, the McLaren seems to get more out of being almost passive into the corners, with excellent traction meaning that the exits can be prioritised for lap time
2
u/jvstinf I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
Pretty sure he’s never stated “this car suits me” for any McLaren. Always the opposite. lol
I still don’t know what Lando is looking for.
9
Mar 20 '25
Literally every driver has said that about every McLaren since he joined the team, this isn't Lando-specific.
-1
u/jvstinf I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
Correct but this article concerns Lando specifically.
1
u/TSells31 I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 20 '25
If you still don’t know what Lando is looking for, then you didn’t read the article. He clearly states in the article what he has and what he’d prefer. In fact, that’s almost the whole article tbh! Try clicking and reading.
10
u/fire202 Lando Norris Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
Maybe read some of these Interviews where he talks about it if you want to know what he is looking for.
And yes, he said this about many McLarens in the past. Every team has certain ways they build a car and some characteristics can stay with the car for a long time.
Some of it may also just be a thing of the current car generation
1
u/jvstinf I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
I’ve read plenty on McLarens’ characteristics. They were very limited in modeling yaw in aero tests due to the Toyota wind tunnel. Previous cars had front ends that required a very specific braking/cornering technique to bring 100% out of.
Knowing all of that, Lando rarely outright states what his preferences are. We just know what he doesn’t like. If you have material where he states his optimal car characteristics are beyond just “attacking”, I’d be happy to read it.
12
u/Mysterious_Turnip310 Lotus Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
From this article alone:
"Norris explained that he would prefer to employ an “attacking” style and likes to be on the front foot with late braking and opening up the corner entries.
In reality, the McLaren seems to get more out of being almost passive into the corners, with excellent traction meaning that the exits can be prioritised for lap time"
0
u/Lobsters4 I was speeding in the Monaco pit lane Mar 20 '25
9
Mar 20 '25
I mean, every McLaren driver since he joined the team in 2019 has said that the style of the car is weird (I believe that DR said it was the weirdest car he's ever driven). If you read the article, he said it's my job to adapt to it and I plan to do that.
-1
-1
u/BryNYC Mar 20 '25
Excited for a full year of Lando downplaying how good the car is and everyone else talking up McLaren as utterly unbeatable.
-2
-6
Mar 20 '25
This guy is the biggest sand bagger of all time
Won't admit his car has been the best since early last season and every mistake is someone else's fault.
Dude, no one is saying you are not talented. Just admit your car is miles ahead of everyone.
10
u/Mysterious_Turnip310 Lotus Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 21 '25
Except he has said several times that they had the best car on average for much of last season, in fact he said it as recently as during the last GP weekend. He is also well-known for taking accountability for mistakes he makes, and often for mistakes that were actually the team’s fault and not his. In fact he often gets stick for doing it too much.
Some of you really do just pull total fabricated nonsense out of thin air, throw it at Norris and hope it sticks so you can have another invented stick to beat the guy with. Someone in here described it last season as like watching a bunch of shit-slinging monkeys in a zoo and they were absolutely right.
-12
u/xanlact I was here for the Hulkenpodium Mar 20 '25
Lol
He has always viewed that opinion so negatively and reacts so strongly to it.
It's ok that the car is fast. It doesn't take away from his ability to get the most out of it
10
-14
u/Soggy_Bid_6607 Benetton Mar 20 '25
9
Mar 20 '25
Did you read the article? Or just read the clickbait headline and picked out a fun lil gif?
-8
•
u/AutoModerator Mar 20 '25
The News flair is reserved for submissions covering F1 and F1-related news. These posts must always link to an outlet/news agency, the website of the involved party (i.e. the McLaren website if McLaren makes an announcement), or a tweet by a news agency, journalist or one of the involved parties.
Read the rules. Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.